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But we must give some explanation of these powers. The matter
requires a more definite handling. How can there be a difference
of power between one triangular configuration and another?
How can there be the exercise of power from man to man; under
what law, and within what limits?
The difficulty is that we are unable to attribute causation
either to the bodies of the heavenly beings or to their wills:
their bodies are excluded because the product transcends the
causative power of body, their will because it would be unseemly
to suppose divine beings to produce unseemliness.
Let us keep in mind what we have laid down:
The being we are considering is a living unity and, therefore,
necessarily self-sympathetic: it is under a law of reason, and
therefore the unfolding process of its life must be
self-accordant: that life has no haphazard, but knows only
harmony and ordinance: all the groupings follow reason: all
single beings within it, all the members of this living whole in
their choral dance are under a rule of Number.
Holding this in mind we are forced to certain conclusions: in the
expressive act of the All are comprised equally the
configurations of its members and these members themselves, minor
as well as major entering into the configurations. This is the
mode of life of the All; and its powers work together to this end
under the Nature in which the producing agency within the
Reason-Principles has brought them into being. The groupings
[within the All] are themselves in the nature of
Reason-Principles since they are the out-spacing of a
living-being, its reason-determined rhythms and conditions, and
the entities thus spaced-out and grouped to pattern are its
various members: then again there are the powers of the living
being- distinct these, too- which may be considered as parts of
it, always excluding deliberate will which is external to it, not
contributory to the nature of the living All.
The will of any organic thing is one; but the distinct powers
which go to constitute it are far from being one: yet all the
several wills look to the object aimed at by the one will of the
whole: for the desire which the one member entertains for another
is a desire within the All: a part seeks to acquire something
outside itself, but that external is another part of which it
feels the need: the anger of a moment of annoyance is directed to
something alien, growth draws on something outside, all birth and
becoming has to do with the external; but all this external is
inevitably something included among fellow members of the system:
through these its limbs and members, the All is bringing this
activity into being while in itself it seeks- or better,
contemplates- The Good. Right will, then, the will which stands
above accidental experience, seeks The Good and thus acts to the
same end with it. When men serve another, many of their acts are
done under order, but the good servant is the one whose purpose
is in union with his master's.
In all the efficacy of the sun and other stars upon earthly
matters we can but believe that though the heavenly body is
intent upon the Supreme yet- to keep to the sun- its warming of
terrestrial things, and every service following upon that, all
springs from itself, its own act transmitted in virtue of soul,
the vastly efficacious soul of Nature. Each of the heavenly
bodies, similarly, gives forth a power, involuntary, by its mere
radiation: all things become one entity, grouped by this
diffusion of power, and so bring about wide changes of condition;
thus the very groupings have power since their diversity produces
diverse conditions; that the grouped beings themselves have also
their efficiency is clear since they produce differently
according to the different membership of the groups.
That configuration has power in itself is within our own
observation here. Why else do certain groupments, in
contradistinction to others, terrify at sight though there has
been no previous experience of evil from them? If some men are
alarmed by a particular groupment and others by quite a different
one, the reason can be only that the configurations themselves
have efficacy, each upon a certain type- an efficacy which cannot
fail to reach anything naturally disposed to be impressed by it,
so that in one groupment things attract observation which in
another pass without effect.
If we are told that beauty is the motive of attraction, does not
this mean simply that the power of appeal to this or that mind
depends upon pattern, configuration? How can we allow power to
colour and none to configuration? It is surely untenable that an
entity should have existence and yet have no power to effect:
existence carries with it either acting or answering to action,
some beings having action alone, others both.
At the same time there are powers apart from pattern: and, in
things of our realm, there are many powers dependent not upon
heat and cold but upon forces due to differing properties, forces
which have been shaped to ideal-quality by the action of
Reason-Principles and communicate in the power of Nature: thus
the natural properties of stones and the efficacy of plants
produce many astonishing results.
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